Time isn’t a thief: A guide to a more organised & productive you.
As designers and creative people, our goals evolve organically and we love to get stuck into the design process, talk to users and just start designing. But why at the end of the project do we always find ourselves asking PM for more time, more resources or we blame the business for not giving us enough time. It becomes a caffeine marathon to get through finalising visuals while being hounded by development for specs. When faced with project planning or even daily plans we struggle, we groan and we feel doing it will take away from our ‘designing’ time.
Failing to plan is planning to fail. This is one of the only things I remember from learning business in secondary school and it has stayed with me since. I knew I wanted to be a designer but I also found value and power in good planning and organisation in approaching any design project.
-Alan Lakein
In this post I want to highlight the importance of planning and taking the time to pause and understand how you will achieve your goals. Planning and being more organised in the way we work will allow you to not only be more productive but also to create better designs. So plan to succeed and stick to it.
We often hear others talk about their plans; they have long term goals, short term goals and immediate goals some refer to them as 6 month, 6 weeks and 6 days. They sound so arbitrary how do you actually do it? I won’t talk today about goal setting that’s a separate conversation. Today we are discussing planning and how to achieve your goals.
Let’s think of them as an overall project plan; 6 months the end of the project. 6 weeks, one sprint or chunk of work and 6 hours or a day in work.
How do you at the beginning of the project even go about creating a 6 month plan for the entire project? Firstly you need to remember it’s a balancing act. You need to create the best user experience, within the budget and resource constraints while meeting business objectives. Understanding that it’s not all about design is very important at this stage, the project plan is a design challenge of its own.
2. Become a UX strategist
It is becoming more and more common that UX is either at the table when project timelines are being created or driving them. If this is you, you need to become a UX strategist, user focused but also understand the business strategy. A UX strategist understands how everything will fit together, interpreting business requirements and business strategy, development resources and limitations and design opportunities.
Because of the different stakeholders involved in any project, Plans have to be based on compromise and commitment. Both of which don’t come very easily for designers, which is why I think planning is so hard for us.
When planning you need to be honest with you and your team. If you have no idea how long things take start taking note now. Why not keep a task log and try to understand how much time things are actually taking, reflecting on your current tasks and project will help you plan better in the future. Get to know your process, and what works best for you and your team. Every person and every team is different. Don’t stick to a generic plan defined by your business or by the design community, no-one can tell you what project plan would work best for you. Reflect and understand you and your teams strengths and weaknesses.
3. Use Design thinking
Design thinking is a way to solve problems for people it follows a user entered design approach, reflection on the current scenario and problems and looks to solve for those problems. Why not use design thinking or your favourite design process when tackling a new challenge to create the project plan, as we said it is a design challenge too, just because it feels like business doesn’t mean to have to ‘suit up.’ Think about how you’re going to tackle the project. This can be especially helpful if you’re not sure how you’re going to tackle the work. Get some post-its and mark out your milestones and work through your planning. It takes some time but it’s worth it.
Remember to make sure your plan is flexible and specific to the project at hand. Add buffer weeks, you know those projects where you uncover a mountain you need to climb or a wall to jump over. Sometimes problems come up, ok you know they will come up, no project runs perfectly so make sure you plan for those blockers and be prepared.
4. Break it down
Now you need to breakdown your vision into bite sized chunks. Remember how we talked about being a UX strategist and understanding how things fit together? Don’t just dive into the vision and get lost in the sea of requirements and wire framing a whole complex ecosystem. You have heard it, this is where we become agile, working alongside development to build smaller pieces quicker. Prioritise your tasks and break it up.
5. Know your good brain time
So now we know our vision and we know what part our sprint is concentrating on. How do we plan our days and be productive? After all if we can’t complete our daily tasks we won’t fulfill our sprint deadlines let alone our 6 month vision.
The first thing I think when planning any day is to understand your good brain time. Just as you need to figure out what overall plan will work for you and your team to make the vision plan. Knowing when your most productive is the key to planning a productive day. So what do I mean about good brain time?
Planning your day isn’t about time management, I like to think that it’s about brain energy management.
Something my lecturer once said to us in college was to ‘figure out your good brain time.’ Of course when she was saying this my class mates and I were rolling our eyes and thinking we just needed to chain ourselves to the desk and do our work!
But honestly it does help. I have worked out that my good brain time is first thing in the morning. Some people are slower in the morning and need some time to wake up and have their coffee but I’m more productive in the morning so I arrive early and get started. Others work best at night. If you have the freedom in your job to tailor your works hours to when they suit your productivity do it!
So how do you figure out when your good brain time is? Firstly analyse your habits and routines to see where your time is actively going. Start being mindful of your most productive hours, Be aware of your head at different times during the day. when can you tackle those design challenges best? From this you can plan your day to know when to do a certain task.
I know I shouldn’t do creative idea generation in my afternoon slump. I fill my spare afternoon time with my easy tasks, updating documentation, sending emails, desk organisation, creating pngs, updating files, and the list of 10 minute tasks I have to complete. Do your challenging to-do list during your good brain time, morning time is where I wire frame, figure out the complex design challenges and take the time to think. Understanding your brain with really help with your daily plan. Then when you come in at your good brain time you can hit the ground running.
6. Plan ahead
To plan your time and complete your tasks you need to project yourself into the future, this not only allows you to break down your vision or your sprints into daily tasks but to also to plan a day for you!
One thing I like to do at the end of every day is to plan for the next day. There are a few reasons for this 1. As I mentioned my good brain time is morning. So I need to hit the ground running in the morning. And day planning is a nice easy task I can do in the evening. 2. I find I’m always over thinking things and trying to remember; Oh Sarah needed those Icons tomorrow I better not forget. Oh how are we going to figure out this design challenge it’s doing my head in. This is why I write things down before I go home. And if I remember something in the evening i add it into my plan. That allows me to move on, leave work at work and enjoy my life outside the office and it helps me sleep.
Being future focused is always thinking in advance planning for those mistakes, those problems that always arise. Remember earlier we mentioned that no project runs smoothly? That you need to include buffer weeks? Planning your days ahead days or even weeks in advance helps. Add the meetings to the calendars, don’t get stuck begging people for their time, schedule it early, you know it’s coming. Get prepared and you will feel in control and less stressed.
7. List & prioritise
Like we do with our 6 week plan, break it into pieces. Break your day up. Not only into work tasks but take non-work-related breaks to increase overall productivity and don’t forget to prioritise. Organised people know what needs to be done and what can be put off. Understand your most important tasks for the day. What do you need to complete for your day to be successful. Plan to complete your important tasks in your good brain time and save easy or not as important tasks for bad brain time, if these don’t get done it’s not the end of the world. I know there are great tools out there such as Trello, but I like to make physical lists with pen and paper. I just love the satisfaction of crossing something out as done. It’s also easy to keep on the desk beside me so I don’t have to keep flicking from my task on my screen to my plan. But again this is personal preference; find a tool to make your plan or to-do list in a way that works for you.
When I think about prioritisation and to-do lists I like to remember that it’s not about multitasking. It’s about unitasking. Multitasking spreads your attention too thin. Give one task all of your attention and check things off one at a time. 1 task at a time, 1 day at a time, 1 sprint at a time and you will reach your vision.
8. Think of it like a diet.
Even the most hyper organised and productive people aren’t that all of the time. I like to think of it as a diet or something you need to be strict in following. I think we are allowed our cheat days. You know when your supposed to be on a diet and you lie in bed all day watching Netflix or just eat cake and not salad? It’s the same with work. We work in a creative industry but we can’t be focused all of the time. Maybe it’s a snow day or the hottest day in the year, maybe you have a date that night, or maybe you have been staring at that damn blank piece of paper ALL day and you just can’t figure it out. Come on, we have all had those days where we just can’t or just don’t want to work. And no matter how much we love our jobs we can’t be productive and motivated everyday. If the plan goes to shit and you get 1 of your 10 things done, you have three choices and these go in order of what I try to do. 1. Move on to the next thing. Or go to the bad brain list. Oh yeah Sarah needs that 1 icon, send that email, updates those visuals, you know the bad brain 10 minute job things. Get them done, it will make you feel better and help to focus again. 2. Just damn well get it done and stick to the plan. This is hard but turn off your phone, go to a quiet room. I like to give myself a time limit (it really helps). Right, I have 1 hour, no Facebook, no talking, no emails, just me and that paper and maybe a piece of chocolate and actively power through. This realisation of your bad brain and your lack of productivity really can help to drive you to get it done. And then finally if all else fails 3. Do something non work related if possible, get some fresh air, change your environment, do something for you and come back to the task later or in the morning. At the end of the day it’s a creative job we do that requires huge focus and brain energy. If our mind is somewhere else how could we design the best experience for our user?
Conclusion
Remember organized people aren’t born, it’s something we can all learn to do. All we can do is strive to be as productive and organised as we can to allow us to create in our best mind set. Being organised improves performance and leads to feeling more in control and having more mental energy. Getting organised can give you the energy boost you need.
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
This blog was originally written as a talk that I gave at UXCampNL 2016. It was great to have a discussion with designers on the topic. If you have anything you want to add or share reach out! Here are some photos from the presentation in UX camp. Find out more about why UX Camp is awesome.
Originally published at medium.com on October 7, 2016.
